WHAT'S WHAT AMONG AMERICAN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES?

This is the subject of the 1995 Data Analysis Exposition
sponsored by the Statistical Graphics Section of the American
Statistical Association.  The purpose of the Exposition is to
encourage statisticians to demonstrate techniques, especially
graphical, for analyzing data and displaying the results of an
analysis.  Individuals and groups will work with the same set of
data and present their analyses at a special session as part of
the annual Joint Statistical Meetings in Orlando, Florida on
August 13th-17th, 1995.  The datasets for 1995 are drawn from two
sources, U.S. News & World Report's Guide to America's Best
Colleges and the AAUP (American Association of University
Professors) 1994 Salary Survey which appeared in the March-April
1994 issue of Academe.

The U.S. News data contains information on tuition, room & board
costs, SAT or ACT scores, application/acceptance rates,
graduation rate, student/faculty ratio, spending per student, and
a number of other variables for 1300+ schools. The AAUP data
includes average salary, overall compensation, and number of
faculty broken down by full, associate, and assistant professor
ranks.

The raw data and documentation are contained in the files
described below.  

Available files

   usnews.txt      Documentation for the U.S. News data
   usnews.dat      U.S. News data in comma delimited format
   usnews3.dat     U.S. News data in fixed column format

   aaup.txt        Documentation for the AAUP salary data
   aaup.dat        AAUP salary data in comma delimited format
   aaup2.dat       AAUP salary data in fixed column format

Two versions of each dataset are provided to accommodate users
with different software constraints.  The comma delimited
versions (usnews.dat and aaup.dat) contain information for each
college on a separate line with values delimited by commas.  The
fixed column versions (usnews3.dat and aaup2.dat) use 2 or 3
data lines per school and a maximum line length of 80 characters.

To participate in the 1995 Data Analysis Exposition you must send
an abstract form to the American Statistical Association by
February 1st, 1995.  Information is available from the ASA
Meetings Department by e-mail (meetings@asa.mhs.compuserve.com),
phone (703-684-1221), fax (703-684-2037), or surface mail (ASA,
1429 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314).  Your initial abstract may
be fairly general since you may do the bulk of your analysis
after the February 1 deadline.

You may choose your own path to proceed in analyzing the data or
use some of the suggested questions below to get started.

... How well can we model tuition using the other variables?
... How might we cluster colleges into similar comparison groups?
... How can we best display faculty salary structure?
... Can we find a reasonable way to rank the schools?

You may work on your own or put together a team.  Show off the
capabilities of your favorite software package or use the data
for a class project and display your students' results.  You may
choose to consider just a subset of schools or examine regional
patterns.  The main point is to find innovative ways to display
the interesting features of the data.

Further questions about the 1995 Exposition can be directed to
Robin Lock, Mathematics Department, St. Lawrence University,
Canton, NY 13617  e-mail   rlock@vm.stlawu.edu

If you would like to be informed about any subsequent adjustments
or error fixes to the 1995 Exposition data, please send an e-mail
message to 'register' your interest to rlock@vm.stlawu.edu.

Special thanks for providing data for the 1995 Exposition to:
Robert Morse, Director of Research for America's Best Colleges at
              U.S. News & World Report
Maryse Eymonerie, Consultant to AAUP.